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A Semantic SOA Approach to

NextGen Information Sharing

Wen Zhu, Alion Science and

Technology

Germaine Forbes, SAF/ CIO A6 /

JPDO

26 Jan 2012

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• Mission

• NextGen Information Sharing Challenges

• Information Sharing Approach

– Process

– Technical Capabilities

– Infrastructure

• Demonstrations

• Putting It Together

• Way Ahead

Agenda

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Mission

Net-Centric Operations Division (NCOD) leads the Joint Planning and

Development Office (JPDO), agency partners, and industry to realize

information sharing capabilities to improve situational awareness,

enhance decision making, and facilitate collaboration.

Information

Exchange

Architecture,

Process, Ontology

Network

Infrastructure

Demonstration

Capability

Experimentation

and

Measurement

Outreach

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• Net-Centric Operations Division (NCOD) promotes policies and strategies for information sharing and coordinate investment and development of network-enhancing capabilities – Work to make the information understandable by:

• Defining an ontology (or shared vocabulary)

• Documenting required information exchanges

• Provisioning services to improve discoverability, re-use, understandability

– Work to make the information discoverable and accessible through • Service registry, Semantic Metadata Catalog and Portal

– Help to identify accurate and timely data • Identifying Authoritative Data Sources, which provide accurate and timely

data

• Incorporating metadata about the accuracy and timeliness of data

Big Picture

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Information Sharing Challenges

State/Local

Government Commercial

Entities International

Partners

Weather

Community

Integrated

Surveillance

Community

UAS

Community

Flight and

Flow

Community

Safety

Community

Airport

Operations

Community

Airline

Operations

Community

Other

Communities

Standards

Services

Data

Weather Flight

Track

SAR Time

Other Services

AXIM

WXXM

FIXM

KML

GML

WCS

WFS

WMS

ebXML

UDDI

Other Standards

Classification Live

Geospatial

Coverage Recorded

Temporal

Coverage Simulated

publish conform

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Inter-Agency Information Sharing Challenges

NAS Target GIG

Network Connectivity

Service Interoperability

Information Integration

Security / Governance

Source: FAA Information Exchange Conference 9/2011 Source: DoD Global Information Grid Architectural Vision, 6/2007

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Information Sharing Approach

• Repeatable process for developing

shared understanding through definition

of information elements across

domains.

• Technology capabilities stack

that enables the information sharing

vision of NextGen.

• Services Oriented Architecture

• Semantic Web Technology

• Federated Ontology

• Interagency infrastructure that

employs the technology stack and

information sharing approaches and

validates them in a near-realistic

environment.

• Enables shared R&D

• Addresses real-world info

sharing obstacles

• Identifies pathways to near-term

operational improvements

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Shared

Understanding

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• Key Deliverables – COI Ontology

– Business Context (DoDAF Artifacts)

– Other Artifacts

• Current Engagements – Weather

– Integrated Surveillance

– Unmanned Aircraft System

• Consistent with DoD

Net-Centric Data

Strategy

Service

Description

(WSDL)

Message Schema

(XSD)

Transformation

Rules (XSLT)

Business Process

Analysis

(OV-2)

Systems

Communications

Description

(SV-2)

Operational Activity

Model

(OV-5b)

Requirements

Document

(SV-4)

Architectural

Impact Report

Business Rules

Service

Constraints

Information

Exchange

Description

(OV-3)

COI Ontology

(RDF/OWL)

Process for Shared Understanding Development

Information

Exchange

Architecture,

Process, Ontology

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Technical

Capabilities

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Semantic Metadata Catalog and Portal Extended Capabilities

•Utilizes existing SOA Registry capabilities

•Addresses cross-agency information exchanges

•Facilitates collaboration

•Focuses on discoverability of defined information exchanges

•Takes full advantage of Semantic Relationships defined in ontologies

SOA Registry Scope

•Governed within an Agency

•Focused on discoverability of published services

•Supports only flat, non-semantic data

•Focused on governance

Bottom Line:

• Utilizes semantic discovery

capabilities

• Yields a more targeted result set

• Provides an intelligent search

beyond simple keywords

Semantics Metadata Catalog and Portal

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Inter-Agency

Infrastructure

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Net-Enabled Test Environment (NETE) • Concept

– Virtual test environment – no new facility

– Government and industry participation

– Experimental approach – test, measure, evaluate, adjust

– Adopting existing projects; leveraging progress

• Benefits

– Data sets made available will bring interested developers

– Allows demonstration of concepts to flesh out requirements

– Allows trade-off studies for architectural decisions – standards, processes, TTPs, tools, infrastructure design

– Tests Governance model for efficiency

– Accessible to all NextGen participants; can link to outside data sources/consumers

– Leverages work already done by NextGen stakeholders

Infrastructure

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FAA

AF Electronic Systems Center

Technology in Action: NETE Demonstrations

Semantic Metadata Catalog and Portal

Weather

Community

Integrated

Surveillance

Community

JPDO User

Interface Layer

Ontology

Portal

Semantic

Metadata

Portal

Semantic Process

Layer

Artifact

Catalog

Semantic

Metadata

Catalog W

eb

Se

rvic

es L

aye

r

Inte

gra

tio

n L

aye

r

Demo 1 External/Future Demo 2

NNEW

Alion NETE Lab

Demo Control

FAA/National

Security

Display

NETE

Dashboard

NOAA NET

Web

Coverage

Service RI

Mock Services

DEX

3-D

Radar

Mosaic

HWDS

NASA LaRC

Timing

ASDE

ASDI

R&D Domain

NAS

Service

Registry

Other Services will be

entered into the Semantic

Metadata Catalog

through User Interface.

Service descriptions from

registry will imported for

inter-agency discovery.

SWIM

NOAA

Registry

WCS

WFS

WMS

Data

Source

One Year Challenge

FAA Emergency OPS

EON

Dashboard

ebXML

SMDC

GIIEP

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Putting It All Together

SWIM

SWIM NAS Enterprise

Messaging Service (NEMS)

NAS Service Registry and

Repository (NSRR)

SIP

Service

Registry

Service

Provider

Service

Consumer

Desig

n T

ime

Run T

ime

• Service Governance

• Service Discovery

• Service Reuse

• Service Interoperability

State/Local

Government

Commercial

Entities

International

Partners

Semantic Metadata

Catalog and Portal

Semantic Mediation

Communities of Interest Shared Understanding

• COI Governance

• Semantic Discovery

• Information Federation

• Semantic

Interoperability

• ESB Federation

• Business Concept

• Service Relationships

• Data Sources

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NextGen Information

Sharing Environment

Information Providers

Geospatial

Info

Weather

Info

Flight

Object

Info

Safety

Info

Security

Info

Intel

Reports

Sensor

Data

Airline

Info

Airport

Info

Other Info

Providers

Aircraft

Semantically-Enabled Core

Enterprise Services

Messaging

Service

Semantically-

Enabled

Service

Discovery

Semantically-

Enabled

Content

Discovery

Semantic Mediation Bus™

Information Consumers

NextGen Enterprise

Services (Notional)

User Defined

Operation

Picture Services

Decision Support

Services

Collaboration

Services

Track Correlation

Services

Other Services

The Technical Profile defines a set

of NextGen Service Specifications

to guide future NextGen enterprise

service development programs

Air Traffic Control

Human Users,

Applications, or

Services

Human Users,

Applications, or

Services

in Aviation

Operations

Unanticipated

Human Users,

Applications, or

Services

GOAL – Procurement-quality

specifications that can be used to

drive acquisition of interoperable

services, systems, and networks in

support of information sharing.

Business Operations Layer

Network Layer

Security Layer

Service Layer

Data Layer

Semantic Layer

NISE Technical Profile

Security

Service

Enterprise

Service

Management

NextGen Information Sharing Environment

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Way Ahead

• Provide operational transition plan for the technical concepts

• Continue to foster JPDO and Inter-Agency Partnership

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Backup Slides

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Semantic Web Technologies

• Semantic Web (aka Linked Data or Web 3.0) is a set of W3C standards and technologies designed to allow machines to understand the meaning of the information on the WWW

• Standards-based

• Open-source tools

• Agent-based distributed computing paradigm

• Web Oriented Architecture

• Agile Development, improved interoperability

• Semantic Web in the Enterprise: A tool for knowledge discovery and management

• Common Vocabulary

• Open Linked Data

• Intelligent Searches

• Semantic Web in the Industry

• US government and leading social network companies have been implementing semantic-driven solutions

Source: Tim Berners-Lee: “Semantic Web and Linked Data”

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NextGen Ontology Portal

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Semantic Metadata Catalog and Portal

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Enterprise Service Bus Registry/ Repository

Semantic Mediation Bus™ (SMB)

• An ontology-based web services mediation component that enables services

with different message formats to interoperate

• Embedding in an Enterprise Service Bus (e.g. SWIM Enterprise Messaging

Service) enables runtime semantic mediation within traditional SOA

infrastructure, creating a Semantic Mediation BusTM

Traditional SOA

infrastructure

Semantic Mediation

Infrastructure

Semantic Mediator™

Protocol

Adaption Message

Transformation

Message

Routing Security

Service

Discovery

Semantic Lookup and

Interoperability Assessment Message Schema

Mapping

Semantic

Annotation

Metadata

Management

Web Service Proxy

Common

Ontology

Semantic Mediation BusTM

Semantic Mediation Bus ™ and Semantic Mediator are trade marks of Alion Science and

Technology Corporation. The Technology is provided to JPDO under a limited use

license.

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Semantic Mediation Bus™

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NETE Demonstration Scenario